Monty Tayloe

The Florida Senate passed online privacy bill SB-262 Friday, 38-0. The bill would allow consumers to opt out of online data collection and ad targeting, and prevent companies from selling their data (see 2304240045). Bill sponsor Sen. Jennifer Bradley (R) called the measure a “digital bill of rights” that's friendlier to small businesses than other state digital privacy laws, but critics such as the Computer and Communications Industry Association and Consumer Reports said the bill wouldn’t provide meaningful privacy protections.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has denied the Standard/Tegna broadcasters’ petition for writ of mandamus, according to a brief, unpublished decision in docket 23-1084 Friday morning.

Protesters called on the FCC to hold a vote on the Standard/Tegna deal Thursday morning at a demonstration outside FCC headquarters, prompting the agency to remind open meeting attendees of the agency’s rules. Though Standard General Managing Partner Soohyung Kim has said he believes three commissioners can force a vote on the deal, one of those commissioners seen as supportive of the transaction said Thursday he doesn’t believe that is possible. “There is no mechanism in FCC rules for non-chair commissioners, no matter how many of them are in support of a particular position, to force a vote on anything,” Commissioner Brendan Carr said in a news conference.

LAS VEGAS -- Broadcasters and broadcast CEOs believe the FCC’s Future of TV Initiative (see 2304170056) will speed the ATSC 3.0 transition and that datacasting revenue could start flowing to TV stations as early as 2024, they said on panels Tuesday at the NAB Show 2023.

Standard General received only 15 to 20 minutes' notice from the FCC that the agency was about to issue a hearing designation order, and Standard doesn’t plan to go away if the Tegna deal falls apart, Managing Partner Soohyung Kim said in an interview Monday. “I don’t think a regulator should dislike the industry it regulates,” he told former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly during an onstage Q&A at the NAB Show Tuesday.

LAS VEGAS -- The structure of FCC regulatory fees and the way they’re applied to broadcasters is a thorny issue that's complicated to change, but this year’s fees will be “closer to a regulatory fee balance,” said David Strickland, media adviser to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, on a panel at the NAB Show Monday. , Media Bureau staff and 10th-floor aides in panels also discussed AM inclusion in cars, media ownership, virtual MPVDs and other topics. The FCC has authority to add Big Tech companies to the payor base, said Adam Cassady, media adviser to Commissioner Nathan Simington: “It may be time for a broad rethinking” of the regulatory fee structure.

LAS VEGAS -- ATSC 3.0 could be used to create the only viable backup for GPS and address a major U.S. national security vulnerability, said broadcasters and experts at this week's 2023 NAB Show. The U.S. power grid, financial markets and telecom industries rely on precise timing based on GPS to function, and would grind to a halt within days if it were rendered inoperable, said Key2Mobile founder Patrick Diamond, a member of the National Space Based Position, Navigation and Timing Advisory Board.

LAS VEGAS -- The FCC will create a public-private partnership to generate a road map for the ATSC 3.0 transition, announced FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel at the NAB Show Monday.

The FCC misrepresented the Standard/Tegna deal as complex and refused to engage with the broadcasters, and Friday’s Supreme Court opinion on agency adjudications underscores that the hearing process is unconstitutional, said Standard General, Cox Media Group and Tegna in their final response filing supporting their petition for mandamus at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (see 2304110072).

Broadcasters are expecting to talk ATSC 3.0, the future of AM radio in cars, and FCC regulatory fees at 2023’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, which kicks off Saturday. It's the second in-person show since the 2020 and 2021 iterations were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Broadcasters, attorneys and industry officials told us they expect the show to be the best attended since 2019. “I don't think there's any question that will be a lot more people than last year's show,” said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford.